“What is this article about? I’m not a legend.”
Carlo Mombelli is not well known. He knows this better than those who do know him: “What is this article about? I’m not a legend.” But those who do know his music go quiet when someone mentions his name; they raise an eyebrow; their senses zoom in. Most of them regard Mombelli and band The Prisoners of Strange one of SA’s most vital, arresting live performers. They consider him an important composer of New Music. Their eyes glaze over when you ask them what his last gig was like.
Mombelli is not a household name. Carlo Mombelli is not 7de Laan. This fits him like a glove. Performing his flexing, polymorphous compositions to a packed arena of 40 000 is not going to happen. He wouldn’t have it. All the noise. It would be 40 000 trespassers, brawling and howling and slipping on his gifted music; disturbing the flow of The Prisoners of Strange’s intensive flows.
Mind you, when I ask him about his favourite live experiences, he mentions The Prisoners of Strange’s 2010 performance at the acclaimed Moers Festival in Germany. The Prisoners were a hit – one review singling them and Bill Frisell out as the festival’s highlights (this from amongst many of the most acclaimed Experimental and Jazz artists in the world.) The band sold more than a hundred copies of their latest album Theory after their set.
I stared into my head
I was first captured by Mombelli’s music around a decade ago, listening to the live German recording Bats in the Belfry. The music was… Incredible.
The opening track consisted of around a minute of expanding silence. Then it became – the silence gently ruptured by the sonic slivers of performers settling around their instruments, discreetly readying themselves for performance. A scraping of shoe here; diagnostic puffs into a trombone or trumpet there; a tentative key; a muffled voice. By the time opener My Friends and I unfurled I was mesmerized.
The journey Bats in the Belfry takes you on is breathtaking – graceful, kinetic, cerebral, playful, intense. The musos so effortlessly tight it sounds as if they’ve been breathing the music for years. I was hooked. His subsequent albums immersed me ever deeper.
Abstractions
Mombelli has long been walking with music. At 8 he experienced the ballet Swan Lake and was drawn into its world, swiftly taking up classical piano. At 16 Mombelli’s instrument-of-choice shifted to electric bass, after hearing the virtuoso snaking of Jaco Pastorius’ Bass-redefining work with Weather Report. The future was aligning.
Being invited by guitar great Johnny Fourie to join his band was a watershed event in your life. You were also thrown into the deep end, so to speak, what with it being a 6 nights/week gig. Was this your public debut? What did you learn from it?
Mombelli: “My public debut was doing a cabaret show singing Michael Jackson tunes in my Dad’s restaurant at the age of 11, six nights a week. The gig with Johnny was my university of music.”
Major musical influences on your composition?
“ECM artists like Eberhard Weber, Bill Frisell, Paul Motion and Egberto Gismonti.”
What contemporary artists excite you?
“Paul Motian at the age of 80, Arvo Part, Avisha Cohen and Radiohead.”
Theory
Following a residency teaching music in Germany, where he recorded several albums with then-band Abstractions, Mombelli returned in the late Nineties. The Prisoners of Strange, whose seed was planted in Germany in 1996, became a shifting collective of musicians manifesting the right shapes and densities to communicate his challenging compositions.
By 2002 The Prisoners had settled around the glowing core of Johnny Fourie (guitar), Siya Makuzeni (vocals and flugelhorn), Marcus Wyatt (trumpet), Sidney Mnisi (sax) and Lloyd Martin (drums). Excepting occasional guests, the tragic passing of Fourie, and Martin’s recent replacement with Justin Badenhorst, the core remained.
The kinetic empathy (perhaps telepathy is more accurate), and sympathetic imagination of The Prisoners make for gigs that are simultaneously electrifying and sublime. And then there is The Bass. Elastic beyond belief, sinuous and robust, Mombelli’s bass-playing is a wonder unto itself. It blends into the unknown – drawing you into its worlds.
For more info on gigs and albums, climb into www.carlomombelli.com
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